Ahab's Adventure's In Wonderland; or The Rabbit

Chapter Nine

Next morning, Monday, I settled my own and comrade's bill; using, however, my comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Franklin-- especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with.

We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own canvas sack and hammock, and Franklin's poor carpet-bag, away we went down the road. As we were going along the people stared; not at Franklin so much-- for they were used to seeing negroes like him in their streets,-- but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Franklin now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his plow blade. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all farms ships did not find their own plows. To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own plow, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a tilling, and deeply intimate with the heart of the soil. In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmer's meadows armed with their own scythes--though in no wise obliged to furnish them-- even so, Franklin, for his own private reasons, preferred his own plow.

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing--though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow--Franklin puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the road. 'Why,' said I, 'Franklin, you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn't the people laugh?'

Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his home city in Africa, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched down there, and its commander--from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain-- this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Franklin's great-aunt, who at that time was a pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Franklin's grandfather. Grace being said,--for those people have their grace as well as we-- though Franklin told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts--Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself--being Captain of a ship--as having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King's own house-- the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl;-- taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. 'Now,' said Franklin, 'what you tink now?--Didn't our people laugh?'